Column Chronicles: Dangerous home work

Dangerous home work

Frank Cotolo
June 16, 2016

It's expensive to pay professionals to fix things in your house but if you take on the jobs yourself you may save a ton of money but do so at the risk of your life.

Each year, a lot of people, mostly men, are killed while taking home repairs into their own hands. Take plumbing.

Plumbers are expensive but most of them know exactly what they are doing and that talent helps them survive the work. A professional plumber said that even simple tasks can be very dangerous.

"It seems to most men that fixing a leaky faucet is a cinch," said the plumber, "but if a man is not handy with a wrench, he could crack his head open while using it. A cracked-open head can cause a perfectly healthy man to bleed to death."

People who refuse to hire exterminators to control insects and rodents from invading their homes have also met with cruel demises.

"A man I know," said the owner and operator of a Wyoming pest control company, "tried to save fifty dollars a month, that's six hundred dollars a year and six thousand dollars over a ten year stretch, by doing all the pest control in his home on his own."

"This is extremely dangerous because a person has to know about poison chemicals and how to mix them. People not in the pest control profession know very little about poison chemicals and how to mix them. That can mean trouble. This fellow I knew, the one who tried to save fifty dollars a month, that's six hundred dollars a year and six thousand dollars over a ten year stretch, by doing all the pest control in his home on his own, got liquid rat poison on his fingers while mixing a strong concoction he was going to spray around the house. He didn't know that a simple wash of the hands after getting liquid rat poison on fingers isn't enough to get rid of the harmful elements from liquid rat poison. Well, you guessed it. That night he was reading in bed and he licked his fingertip to turn a page in a book and he was dead in seconds."

Probably the most dangerous home tasks to take on have to do with electricity. Richard "Dick" Richardson, an electrician for 55 years in North Dakota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Montana, West Virginia, Georgia and the Galapagos Islands, said he personally knew a hundred men that lost their lives while trying to mend wiring in their home.

"There are so many better ways to save money," said economy expert William Sweatshop. "People laugh at putting change in piggy banks but that loose change can grow to many dollars," he said. "If you put dimes and quarters into piggy banks you can even save more. Not only that, but you can use banks in the shapes of other animals. You can buy bunny banks, crocodile banks, elephant banks and banks in the shapes of superheroes like Spiderman and The Hulk and Batman. Personally, I would save coins in a bank if they made one in the shape of Aquaman but they don't make one in the shape of Aquaman."

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.